


A Moment Of Silence

by malinaldarose (coralysendria)



Series: Moments [4]
Category: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)
Genre: Angst, Community: trope_bingo, Gen, Missing Scene, Presumed Dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-16
Updated: 2015-10-16
Packaged: 2018-04-26 15:16:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5009689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coralysendria/pseuds/malinaldarose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>William Brandt must decide whether or not to join Ethan Hunt.  Set during the train scene in <i>Mission Impossible:  Ghost Protocol</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Moment Of Silence

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. This piece is for the Presumed Dead square on my current Trope Bingo card. (I've lost track of what round we're in.)  
> 2\. This piece is unbeta'd.  
> 3\. Thank you for reading!

"The Secretary," Ethan Hunt said, with a glance at Brandt, "is dead. The President has invoked Ghost Protocol. We're shut down. No satellite, safe house, support, or extraction. The four of us, and the contents of this car, are all that remains of the IMF. And as of this moment, any action is unsanctioned. So if you want out, speak now."

For a moment, silence reigned inside the high-tech carriage. It was so well-insulated that not even its clacking passage over the rails could be heard. In that fraught silence, the success or failure of Ethan Hunt's chosen mission hung in the balance.

William Brandt drew breath to voice his objection. This was his chance to reassert control over his life, control that had begun slipping the instant Ethan Hunt had climbed from a Moscow alley into the Secretary's vehicle, control that had been shredded the instant the Secretary died. (Had it really only been three hours ago?) Brandt had fallen down the rabbit hole -- with Ethan Fucking Hunt, of all people. 

He hadn't understood why the Secretary had insisted on picking up this one agent in particular, especially when the entire agency had been disavowed not an hour previously, when they had to get the hell out of Russia before they were themselves arrested. When the agent got into the SUV and the light from the opened door fell on his face, Brandt thought his heart would stop. Fortunately, he had a few seconds to compose himself because Ethan's attention had been all for the -- to him -- unexpected presence of the Secretary. When they were introduced to one another, Brandt was able to respond politely, and in character as the Secretary's chief analyst.

He knew the name, of course -- all of IMF knew the name -- but in the way of large workplaces everywhere, he had never connected the name to a face. But Brandt knew that face. That face represented failure. _His_ failure, on his last mission as a field agent.

He and his team had been assigned to protect a married couple. Nothing more than that -- just a protection detail. But it all went south. The woman he now knew had been Julia Hunt was killed, and her husband disappeared. He had been so fixated on the woman's death that he had never wondered or cared what had happened to the husband. Some analyst -- he should have made the connection before with Ethan's sudden incarceration; he'd been in the room when Ethan was disavowed over an unsanctioned hit.

Brandt had never failed before. Prior to that mission, he had always returned objective in hand. In fact, given his success rate, it was surprising that he and Ethan had never worked together. Still, IMF could be very insular; if agents formed a team that worked, they tended to stay with that team as long as possible, and he and Ethan had both had good teams.

Brandt had been a good agent, but when he returned from Croatia broken by Julia Hunt's death, by his own failure to pass on a warning when it might have saved her, and unable to hold someone else's life in his hands, the Secretary had offered him a chance to become something new. His field experience combined with a ferocious intelligence made him an excellent analyst. He took as much pride in his analytical skill as he had in his field service. That pride was the reason he had bridled when it seemed as though Ethan was denigrating his analysis of the Cobalt situation -- a situation that he now found himself smack in the middle of.

When the Secretary introduced him to Ethan, he had retreated almost naturally into the mindset of a field agent. He had played the clueless analyst so successfully, that Carter and Dunn had already dismissed him as practically irrelevant. Useless. A hindrance and liability. He had seen Dunn rolling his eyes when Brandt accidentally activated the car's armory cupboard. (As if Dunn's few minor forays into the field made him a better agent than Brandt, some treacherous part of his brain whispered.) Ethan, he abruptly realized, had _not_ dismissed him. Ethan was waiting. Waiting to see how Brandt could be useful. 

And that brought him neatly back to the problem. Could he be useful? How could he go back into the field? How could he let others rely on him?

But how could he not?

Carter and Dunn would follow Ethan through the gates of Hell if that was where the mission took him; Carter had that look in her eyes, and everyone in the agency knew that Benji Dunn worshipped the ground at Ethan's feet. They were going to need him -- to balance out Benji's hero worship, if nothing else. Even if they never thought him more than an unblooded bureaucrat, they were at least going to need what he knew, and they were going to need his ability to piece together disparate bits of information into a seamless whole. 

He looked up. Ethan was staring at him with an intensity that demanded an answer -- and not just any answer, but the answer that Ethan wanted. Mercilessly, Brandt's mind put all the factors together, laid them out for him, and came to the conclusion that he could not walk away. 

He released his indrawn breath and looked away, his objection unspoken. Four people with no support could not hope to prevail against Hendricks, but he owed this man reparation to balance out his abject failure in Croatia. This, then, would be his atonement.


End file.
